Discussion Title: Is having children a bad idea in today's times?

1. Having children is a bad idea in today's times.
1.1. Pro: Life for each individual consists of net suffering. Therefore, introducing new children into the world increases the amount of suffering in the world.
1.1.1. Con: A certain degree of suffering is necessary to be able to see the beauty and joy in life. Not everyone encounters endless suffering, nor does everyone suffering agree that they would rather not have lived at all. Some individuals experience a life of net happiness.
1.1.2. Con: This way of looking at others suffering imposes one's own opinions of suffering onto others. One can't assume these children would not like to live.
1.1.2.1. Con: By the very fact that unconceived children do not exist, they cannot have wants or desires. It is impossible to make any claim about something that does not exist. Therefore you cannot deny that theoretical child anything.
1.2. Pro: Each new human causes an immense environmental impact
1.3. Pro: Rather than have a child of your own, you could eleviate the suffering of a child in need through adoption.
1.3.1. Pro: Through adoption, the environmental impact of having a child is reduced
1.3.2. Pro: You can help an already existing person, who might otherwise live in poor conditions
1.4. Pro: We haven't completed the shift to renewable energy yet
1.5. Pro: Jobs are getting automated and affording children will become a luxury
1.5.1. Con: There has always been a cost to parents of having children. How job loss due to automation impacts prospective parents is a question of government policy first.
1.5.1.1. Con: It is unclear whether we'll have government officials with the will and knowledge necessary, in sufficient numbers, to deal with job loss due to automation.
1.5.1.2. Pro: Many simple policies such as a universal basic income can allow automation as well as family expence.
1.6. Pro: Homo sapiens have overpopulated the planet.
1.6.1. Con: We have overpopulated in certain areas, in others population is [plateauing and even declining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline).
1.7. Con: Children are the glue keeping a family together
1.7.1. Con: They are also the ones experiencing the fallout of familial breakdown.
1.7.2. Con: The concept of "family" is evolving: Many people are childless by choice and live with an elective family who is not related by blood but fulfill the same roles caring for each other.
1.7.3. Con: Children often hold family together by force. This results in many abusive relationships in family and bad childhood.
1.8. Con: Many religions believe that souls deserve to be born into a human body.
1.8.1. Con: Religions may change to assume a pre-life state of bliss similar to the afterlife, which would save those souls from birth into a potentially painful existence on an overpopulated earth.
1.9. Con: Familial ties are already very strained in the western world
1.9.1. Con: Children strain familial ties further and ultimately bear the brunt of their breakdown. This is an argument for not having children.
1.9.2. Con: Whether a person is close to their family or not might not have a bearing on whether they wish to procreate or not.
1.10. Con: Procreation is drilled deep into our genetics
1.10.1. Con: A lot of things are drilled deep into our genetics, one of the defining features of humans is that we are able to overcome these instincts when it is beneficial, rather than giving into them.
1.10.1.1. Pro: For example, humans are territorial and prone to aggression. The latter has been channeled into doing and watching sports.
1.11. Con: Longstanding genetic lines get uprooted when a couple decides not to have kids
1.11.1. Con: There is no value in keeping long standing genetic lines active when people are dying as a result of overpopulation ergo ending said genetic lines.